RobotEscape

As big of a fan as I am of robot festivals, it generally takes booze, sex, or violence to motivate me to travel to one. And Pittsburgh is not exactly at the top of my list. But Robot 250, sponsored by Carnegie Mellon University and the City of Pittsburgh, actually looks pretty cool. The festival takes place all around the Pittsburgh and includes lots of robotic art installations, many of which are interactive. The picture above is of Mower, a robotic sheep that walks around (on, um, six legs) and trims grass with a small blade inside its mouth. Mower’s head contains obstacle avoidance sensors and a GPS locator for fully autonomous grass mitigation operations. It was designed by Osman Khan, a visiting professor at CMU.